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Friday, October 28, 2011

There Is No Prize

There's no trophy. There should be (just for the effort), but there isn't.

When I first started down the path of an Attachment Parent, I remember thinking that the competition between moms was bizarrely fierce. Like, the kind of fierce that was way more about the moms than it was about the kids.

A conversation could start about what do you feed your kids for breakfast, and eventually someone would post about how they basically make everything by hand and baby is never fed anything less than 100% organic homemade food. And this would always seem to carry the mom's belief that if you didn't do what she did, you weren't as devoted. Now, hey, if you've got the time, good on you. But it doesn't make you better than anyone else around here trying to get the job done. Pop Tarts may not be the Breakfast of Champions, but if I'm really sick and my kids need to eat, I'll toss them a box and call it good. I know. I'm spectacular.

So what is it about us moms that makes us so competitive with each other? Why is it that our opinion can't just be ours, but has to be accepted as the right one? Can I say again that there's no trophy here?

I think what it comes down to is that we have so much invested in what we do as parents, that we sometimes have to believe that what we're doing is the absolute best way, and if others can't see that, it threatens what we believe. Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but I know that the intense passion we put into the family that we love can sometimes come across as overbearing to others.

Since there's no trophy and no winning in motherhood, I wish some of the super competitive moms could just take a step back and enjoy. For serious.

3 comments:

I find that many aspects of parenting are like religion. There is always that group of people that want to shove their version down your throat because it is "best" and everyone should do what they do. I mean, heck, why not just slap some fleece on us and put us out in a field. I am so sick of the "follow like mindless sheep" crap. It all makes my head hurt.

I think women do a lot of it to themselves. We take someone else's comment or opinion and let it flare up one of our own insecurities and that's where the "mama guilt" comes from. From ourselves and our own insecurities, not so much from other moms.For myself, if I've made an educated choice that is best for my family and done the best I could with what I had to work with at the time and am always striving to do better...then I have nothing to feel guilty about nor do I feel the need to "defend" my choices to anyone.Krista